


Original Sin

by darthneko



Series: Original Sin [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-03
Updated: 2005-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-07 23:59:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthneko/pseuds/darthneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Hohenheim Elric had been a State Alchemist?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Refugees

**Author's Note:**

> **Notes:** First anime series AU - does _not_ reflect manga or Brotherhood canon.

Refugees. The townspeople of Youswell has grown used to the sight of them over the years, silent individuals and equally silent tiny families, ragged and dirty and all marked with the same lost, hopeless air. They drifted like milkpods, there one day and gone the next, Youswell just one stop on the road from nowhere to nowhere else. The miners and townsfolk didn't bother to try to ask their names any more. They took cen, if the refugees had in, in exchange for food. They gave water freely, and turned blind eyes to bodies that sometimes spent the nights in doorways or huddled at the train station. There was nothing else to be done - stretched out over rock and stone at the edge of civilization, Youswell, first and foremost, had always had to take care of its own.

The children were always the hardest to ignore, Halling thought, watching one youngster trudge through the dust of the street in the last gold light of sunset. Refugees from the east rarely had more than the clothes on their back and scavenged battered packs to their name. Families on the move couldn't afford to put able pairs of legs to waste - too often wounds or sickness had already stripped them to struggling to manage. Halling had seen too many children since the war started, boys and girls both, often barely older than his own son Kayal but struggling under the weight of packs or infant siblings or wounded parents. All of them had the same dead look to their eyes and too many had the pinched look of hunger.

It had taken Halling a long time to learn to look away. He could barely keep food on his own table for his wife and Kayal when the tax collectors came. Charity was something only the rich could indulge in. Youswell and her dwindling mines weren't rich and charity was a habit Halling couldn't afford if he wanted to keep his own family off of the streets. All the same... it was hard to watch the children.

The youngster trudging ahead of Halling couldn't have been more than five, thin and lost in a threadbare sweater that was too large for him. He didn't carry pack or sibling but he walked with a heavy limp that weighted him down; Halling shook his head with a heavy sigh. Butchers. The war was full of nothing but butchers and dead eyed children and taxes that squeezed the life from honest working men.

The boy, stepping off of the shallow curb, stumbled and went to his knees. Halling winced in the reflexive anticipation of a parent, well aware of the volume Kayal could reach when he hurt himself. The cries, however, never came - like too many children before him the refugee boy took the fall without complaint, catching himself on outstretched hands without a sound.

Hurrying his steps, Halling closed the distance between them before he could think better of it and reached down to give the boy a hand up. "Here... are you alright?"

A small, solemn face turned to look up at him. The fading light turned the boy's hair and eyes the color of molten gold beneath the patina of road dust that clung to him. Wide eyes blinked at him, then dropped to examine the boy's small hands. He brushed them against one another, dusting away grit, and started to struggle to his feet.

Halling caught at one thin arm, steadying the boy. Upright, the child barely came to the miner's hip. "Are you hurt?" The paving had torn right through the boy's wear worn pants at the knee, threads and fabric dangling. "Are you bleeding?"

The boy shook his head, hair falling into his eyes. "I'm fine," he whispered.

Halling frowned. "You're sure? That was a hard spill. Where's your family?"

The boy half shrugged, pointing; the sleeve of his sweater slid over his hand, flopping loosely. Looking in the direction he indicated, Halling saw a man who must be the boy's father coming out of the general store, a pack in one hand and an even younger child occupying the other.

Well. The store meant they must at least have money to eat with. That was a relief. Halling let the boy go, checking again to make sure that he was standing alright. "Can you walk?"

"I'm _fine_," the boy repeated. Indeed, his limp wasn't any worse when he set his weight on the injured leg, plodding ahead with studied determination. He hadn't taken three steps, though, when he went down again and this time the fall jarred a small, muffled cry from him.

"Careful!" Halling reached for the boy again, no more able to stop himself than he could have stopped himself from picking up Kayal when his son stumbled. Ahead of them a man's voice called out "Edward!" and moments later the boy's father arrived in a flurry of footsteps, pack dropped in favor of picking up his son.

Halling released the boy and stepped back. "He scraped his knee pretty hard back there on the curb."

The boy's father was a tall man, broad shouldered, with the same gold colored hair as the boy. He went to one knee beside his son; the younger child, another little boy, was tucked into the crook of his elbow, wrapped in a fold of dusty blanket and asleep against his shoulder. The man smoothed the older boy's hair back with his free hand. "Are you alright, Edward?"

Halling, watching, felt his jaw go loose. The man's hand picked up and reflected the dimming sunset in bright flashes that slid over precisely interlocked metal shapes.

_Automail_. The man's hand was _automail_.

Refugees were a common sight. Wounded refugees were no stranger. Halling had seen men and women swathed in dirty bandages, people with bleeding wounds or fresh scars, people with stumps where arms or legs had been. It happened, and the sight of it had long since stopped being shocking. The more fortunate had pegs and canes to take the place of missing legs, or hooks to take the place of absent arms.

Automail would give a man back his actual hand, or like enough as to make no difference. Automail took the work of a skilled mechanic to be fitted with, Halling had heard it said that it took years to master the use of it, and above all else... Automail took _money_.

Halling would have bet that every coin of every refugee that had gone through Youswell in the last year couldn't have bought an automail limb, not if every last cen were pooled together.

The boy was wiping his face with one dangling sleeve. He sniffled once, head hung down, voice so low that Halling could barely hear him. "Sorry. S'hurts."

The boy's father sighed, ruffling the child's hair. "I know. I'm sorry, Edward. Not much farther now, I promise. Can you walk?"

Thin shoulders straightened beneath the sweater and the boy nodded, a stiff jerk of his head. The man retrieved his pack, slinging it on his free shoulder, and then stood and reached out his hand. The boy took it in both of his, leaning heavily against his father's support. "Thank you," the man told Halling. Behind a pair of dusty and battered glasses the man's eyes were a darker shade than the boy's, framed in a network of worried lines that pulled his brows down.

"It's no trouble," Halling told him honestly. And then, not quite able to help himself, he heard his own voice adding "Where are you headed?"

It was the question the townspeople didn't ask and the refugees didn't answer. There usually wasn't an answer and it was pointless to ask, pointless to drag out the inevitable by getting involved. Halling knew better, but the gold and silver sunlight shining from the man's hand made him forget it.

The man steadied a son with each arm; encumbered, he pointed with his head, indicating the direction of the train station with a nod. "We missed the last train; we'll be staying here for the night. The shopkeep mentioned an inn... do you know where it is?"

Halling nearly grinned. The owner of the store, Rodden, knew how to keep his bar tab extended even if he hadn't paid on it in over a month. "I surely do," he told the man. "My family runs the best inn and bar in Youswell. You'll be wanting a room for yourself and your boys? Maybe some dinner?"

"That would be perfect," the man replied. His accent was flawless Amestrian, with a hint of the longer sound that could be found to the south. As ragged as either of his sons, he wore layers of travel stained and dust shrouded clothes and looked no different from any other refugee.

Except for his hand, where it supported his older son at his side. That impossible hand that would, by itself, have cost more than Halling could be assured of making in a year.

_Don't count an egg until it's hatched,_ Halling's grandmother had been fond of saying. A man needed money to have automail. There was no reason to think that it in any way meant that he'd have money after he sprang for the replacement. No charity, Halling reminded himself. Boys Kayal's age or not, Halling's family couldn't afford charity. "100 thousand for the night, dinner included," he told the man. It was no more than any of the other inns would charge, he said to himself.

The man barely hesitated. "Alright. Is it far?"

Threadbare, dusty, dirty, but moneyed. Halling silently promised himself to cancel Rodden's whole tab. "Just up the street. I was heading back - work a shift in the mine during the day, barkeep in the evenings. Do you need some help with that?" he indicated the man's pack.

The man nodded gratefully. Pulling his hand free from his son's for a moment, he let Halling take the pack. Stooping, he scooped up his older boy, swinging the child onto his hip. The boy protested with a yelp but the man hushed him. "Just to the inn. You need to be off that leg."

Cheeks ablaze, the boy subsided, hands fisted in his father's coat as he buried his face against the man's shoulder. On the other side his brother shifted, stirring sleepily.

Halling, the pack heavy in his hands, looked the man over once more and then met his eyes. Beneath the man's coat and loose shirt, where the boy's small hands fisted in his collar, there was a flash of metallic braid that was the worse for wear, edging fabric that might once have been dark blue but was stained black in the dimming light. The sight of it stopped Halling cold and made his voice rough. "Military?"

The man's expression tightened, lines bracketing the corners of his mouth at the edges of his beard. He studied Halling. "Is it a problem?" he asked quietly.

The pieces fell into place. Of course... the military could afford to give a wounded soldier automail. They damn well ought to be able to, Halling thought bitterly, given the amount they wrung out in taxes. And soldiers, wounded or not, were the ones out in the east making refugees of families and children that limped their way through Youswell in search of a home to replace the one they'd been chased from. Something of his thought must have shown in his face because the man sighed and bent to let his older son back down. "I'm sorry for wasting your time," he told Halling tersely. "Is there any other inn nearby, or would their answer be the same?"

Afterwards, Halling wasn't quite sure what figured most prominently in his decision. 100 thousand cen was a goodly sum, a much needed windfall for his family, and Halling was well aware that morals and eating didn't need to go into the same sentence. There was that, and then there was the wince the boy tried to hide as his feet touched the ground, the wounded leg dangling heavily as his father set him down once more. He wasn't much older than Kayal, but he didn't make a sound of complaint despite the obvious pain.

Sighing, Halling shouldered the small family's pack. "Didn't say it was a problem," he said gruffly. "Your money's good, that's all _I_ care about. Military pays you, you pay me, tomorrow you're on the train. Coming?"

The man hesitated, doubt plain in his face. Halling would have doubted his own patience with his momentary loss of morals - no one in Youswell gave more to the military than they absolutely had to - but the boy tugged at his father's wrist with both hands, his whisper small. "Papa? Can we sit soon?"

That clinched the matter. The man lifted his son back up, a tight wince of pain crossing both of their faces before the child was settled on the man's hip. "Lead on, please," the man told Halling.

Halling turned down the street, pack across one shoulder, pick resting on the other. The man fell into step beside him. The silence stretched for a block before Halling, with a sigh of resignation, broke it. "You have a name?"

The man took a moment to answer, gaze following Halling from the corner of his eyes. "Hohenheim," he said at last. "Hohenheim Elric." He inclined his head to his sons, indicating the oldest first. "My sons, Edward and Alphonse."

Military, but he didn't give his rank or advertise it. Money to spend, but threadbare, travel stained, worn and ragged, with two equally ragged children, passing through the far eastern edge of civilization. Halling, turning the puzzle over in his mind, came up with a plausible solution and shot his paying guest a second look. They walked abreast and Halling kept his voice low. "Discharged or AWOL?"

The man's head jerked up, his mouth opening. Halling shook his head, offering a small apologetic smile. "Don't answer. This far out it doesn't matter. Nobody here cares." Tugging the pack higher on his shoulder, pleased with himself for solving the answer, he quickened his pace. "Come on. My wife will have dinner ready. Those boys of yours are probably hungry."


	2. Parcel Post

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day in the life...

"Will that be all, Mr. Elric?"

Leaning one plump hip against the counter, Marie watched with amusement as her customer frowned down at the grocery packages with the sort of look that made her think of a rabbit just before it went to the chopping block. Hohenheim Elric was a good man - strong, well favored, smart, educated, polite, a good neighbor, and he had never shirked his tab. Marie, however, had overseen the Risembul general store most of her life, watching the whole of the town pass through her door year in and year out, and at seven months down with two more to go she thought she could authoritatively say that the man was making a fair bid to win some trophy for one of the worst cases of pre-baby jitters it had been her misfortune to witness.

Not even for his first child, which would have been understandable, but Hohenheim and Trisha Elric already had a son who was a darling sweet faced boy that took after his father's golden coloring. And there they were, well on their way to a second child, and the father still an absolute mess. Still, Marie thought, it had taken her Chet until their third child to really get the hang of the whole procedure so there was still hope - maybe in another year or two Hohenheim would steady down.

Hohenheim was still eyeing the groceries with a mild look of panic. He didn't have a list - that was half of the problem right there, though that was his wife's fault. But Trisha Elric was still a young girl and obviously needed a few pointers herself, starting with the tip to never send a man to the store without a list - no, not even a fancy university learned alchemist. Or _particularly_ not an alchemist - Marie had filled Hohenheim's orders when he shopped for his work and a more oddball and eclectic mix of random things she'd never seen.

The items spread out on the counter looked more like standard shopping fare, something Trisha had usually done before she got too heavy to make the trip into town from the Elric's outlying farm. Hohenheim dithered, counting over the groceries, then finally shrugged sheepishly, shoving up his glasses with one blunt, ink stained finger. "I think that's everything, Marie. Thank you."

Marie silently shook her head as she quickly wrapped up the last items. Another child, that was what the Elrics needed. Let them get through the current one and have one more and they'd both steady right down. Which could only be for the good, Marie thought, because Hohenheim Elric was an absentminded, distracted accident waiting to happen that only got worse the bigger his wife's belly grew.

"I'll tell you what," Marie said, taking pity on the man as he fidgeted from foot to foot while she rang up the purchases. "If you get home and find out you've forgotten something, well, you've got a telephone at the house, don't you? We're not wired for it here but call down to the station - they'll take a message for us and run a list over here. I'll pull what you need from the shelf and if you come knocking after hours I'll have it waiting for you."

Hohenheim flushed, cheeks darkening, but his smile was broad and relieved. "Marie, you're a wonder. Thank you." He drew out a worn wallet, already counting out bills. "How much do I owe you?"

No, any man who paid his tab so promptly wasn't hopeless, Marie decided. Hohenheim was just a little rough around the edges, like most men - in another few years he'd make a fine figure of a husband.

* * * * *

_Cheese, flour, peach preserves, lemon curd, sugar, onions..._

Hohenheim sighed, setting the grocery bags down on the steps of the store entrance. There had been something else on the list, he was sure of it. He wondered, not for the first time, why things like shopping lists couldn't be written in numbers or chemical symbols or any other form of notation that he could easily recall instead of words.

Or, conversely, why he hadn't thought to write it all down on paper when Trisha, her hands full with wrestling Edward into a pair of shoes (while their son vehemently protested the entire business), had rattled the whole list off to him. He was certain that hindsight was one of the least useful things the human mind had ever created.

_...onions, salt pork, soap..._ He frowned momentarily at the bags, then shrugged it off. Either he would remember when he was halfway home or Trisha would remind him when he got there.

There was another list in addition to the groceries, one he had already checked most of off - Sara and Mark Rockbell's house, the Klint's house, Anvardi's office, the bank, the store... And that left only the train station, to check for a shipment of books that he was devoutly hoping had arrived on the mail train.

The afternoon was turning too bright and warm for a coat, the sky overhead a clear, summer blue. Hohenheim slipped his jacket off, rolled his shirt sleeves to his elbows and, with coat tucked beneath one arm and bags in either hand, stepped down to the street. The sooner he finished the list, the sooner he could be home.

The Risembul train depot, a one building affair tucked at the very end of the street that wound through the small town, stood deserted in the early afternoon of trains and people alike. However, there was a yellow pennant hanging dully from the front pole, limp in the heat, and Hohenheim took the shallow steps up to the platform two at a time. "Hello the station!"

He had just reached the entrance, struggling with bags to free a hand, when the door opened from the inside. The station master, Karl Hauser, peered out from underneath grizzled brows to blink at the midday sun. "Hello? Oh! Mr. Elric... come in, come in. You've a parcel, you know."

"My books!" Hohenheim said triumphantly, ducking through the door as Hauser stood aside to wave him in. "It's about time."

"Books?" Hauser said in mock disbelief as he closed the door on the heat. "I thought they were _bricks_ by the feel of it! Yes, yes, those books you keep coming to look for every week are finally here. Be patient for another minute and I'll go get them." So saying, he ducked behind the ticket counter, his shock of white hair dropping out of sight as he bent to rifle through the mail bins. Hohenheim rested his bags on the counter top, leaning over it eagerly as Hauser shoved a bulky, paper wrapped package into his hands.

"You've some letters as well," Hauser grumbled, straightening with a grunt and an audible pop from his knees. "Your usual correspondence from Bairuth..."

"Ah?" Hohenheim, busy tearing open the paper to get at the bound volumes within, didn't look up. "Oh, that'll be Majhal. Wonder if he fixed that equation yet?"

"For all the letters you send back and forth I'd think you'd have written one of those books by now," Hauser sniffed. "There's a couple of letters from Central, too."

"Central?" Wrapping finally disposed of, Hohenheim drew out the first book, a tattered thing who's leather cover had turned grayish black, cracked and blotchy from use. "That's probably Trisha's parents, they said they might go to the city for the season." Holding the book carefully in one hand, he gently folded back the cover, a smile breaking across his face as he studied the yellowed and water stained page beneath. "First edition, _with_ the flyleaf intact. I'm going to owe Tim a minor miracle in exchange."

"Very interesting, I'm sure," Hauser intoned dryly. "Your _mail_, Mr. Elric?"

"Oh, oh yes... ah..." At a loss, his hands full of books, Hohenheim finally nodded towards the grocery bags. "Put it in one of the bags, will you? I've got a bit much to carry."

"Especially if you're reading while walking," Hauser grumbled. He tucked the handful of letters into the nearest sack and gathered up the bits of paper and string left from the unwrapped package. "Have a good day, Mr. Elric. Tell your wife hello."

"I will," Hohenheim replied absently, scooping up the bags with one hand, book still cradled in the other. "Thank you, Karl."

"Just doing my job," Hauser replied. Hohenheim, already turning to the door and still perusing his books, just waved.


	3. Domesticity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fatherhood.

It was cool in the house after the summer sun and Hohenheim breathed a sigh of relief as he closed the door. Setting the bags down in the hallway, he hung his coat on the rack. "Trisha?" he called, "I'm back. I picked up the mail while I was in town - there's some letters, I think your mother wrote..."

He stopped abruptly. His wife stood in the doorway of the kitchen, hands on her hips, her frown thunderous. Her hair and the apron wrapped high over the swell of her stomach were both askew and there were black smudges all over her. Hohenheim winced - Trisha, with that look on her face, was never a good sign.

Trisha fixed him with a stern glare, her voice steely. "Theodore Phillip Hohenheim Elric..."

He winced again but resumed breathing. It wasn't, quite, his full name and anything less meant that he hadn't yet been summarily tried without hope of jury or plea. Trisha leveled an accusing finger at him. "_Your_ son..."

"Trisha..." Hohenheim began, but she was having none of it.

"_Your_ son found an open box of charcoal this morning. Outside your study. Hohenheim, we've _had_ this conversation."

Hohenheim groaned. As much as he had tried to object to Edward's tendency to suddenly become _his_ son in Trisha's eyes - and thus, his sole responsibility - when the boy was in trouble, it would be hard to deny that a box of charcoal sticks was certainly his fault if it was been left where Edward could lay hands on it. "Did he draw on the walls or eat it?"

Trisha blew the limp fall of her hair out of her eyes. There was a dark smudge of what Hohenheim guessed was the selfsame charcoal across her nose. "He drew on the floor with it," she said, "just like his papa. And what he _didn't_ draw with or cover himself in, he _ate_." She sighed, relenting, her smile echoing wry amusement at their plight. "I got him mostly cleaned up and made him drink a glass of milk to settle his stomach."

Shaking his head, Hohenheim picked up the groceries. "I'm sure that vastly improved his mood. How is he? How are _you_?"

She chuckled, turning her face up for his kiss as he slid past her into the kitchen. "I send Edward to his room. The banging stopped about twenty minutes ago." She followed after him, going to stir a tall pot on the stove as Hohenheim began unpacking bags onto the dining table. "I started supper; did you get the onions?" He held them up and her smile brought out the dimples in her cheeks. "Good... oh, and the lemon curd! Thank you, you have no idea how much I've wanted that..."

"...Over icecream," Hohenheim finished, grinning. "I _know_."

Trisha laughed, patting the bulge of her stomach. "This one is going to have a sweet tooth, mark my word. I've been craving nothing but the whole time." She put the lid back on the pot and came to take the flour from him. "I'll finish here. Go get cleaned up and make certain your son hasn't poisoned himself."

He pulled her against him, dropping a kiss to the top of her head. "Don't overwork yourself. You know what Sara said..."

Trisha batted at him, mock indignant. "Sara is a worrier. So are you. Go on... I can manage groceries."

He let her go with another kiss. The last of the bags disgorged soap, spools of thread, a tin of biscuits and the items from the post. Hohenheim retrieved his books, tucking them under his arm. "Alright. I'll check on Edward - call me if you need me."

* * * * *

Upstairs the house was warmer, the breeze from the open windows sluggish and heavy. Hohenheim stripped off his tie, leaving the crumpled length of it, along with the books, on his bedside table - an act which required balancing the whole on the stacked books and notes already there and he reminded himself to tidy sometime soon before the accumulated clutter got out of hand. Closing the door to their bedroom securely, a habit adopted shortly after Edward had developed independent locomotion, he continued down the hall to the nursery.

The room was quiet and Hohenheim opened the door cautiously in case his son was asleep. Edward, however, wasn't. Face screwed up in a furious pout, the boy was seated on the middle of the floor, small legs spread out in front of him, clutching a stuffed dog nearly as large as he was. He was disheveled, blond hair sticking every which way, face soot and tear streaked, one shoe missing, red eyes and blotchy. All around him some unseen hand - or a toddler in the midst of a temper tantrum - had dumped, thrown, and liberally stirred the contents of the room with a stick. The shelves were empty, the toy chest knocked over, and every toy, book, pillow and blanket was on the floor.

Hohenheim schooled his expression into the sternest he could manage and stepped into the room, over a picture book that had obviously been hurled at the wall, and shut the door behind him. "I talked to Mama," he told his son gravely.

Edward, one amber eye visible over the head of the stuffed dog, sniffled.

Sighing, Hohenheim nudged a few toys out of the way and lowered himself to sit cross legged next to his son. He reached out to smooth the wild hair and Edward sniffled again. "Show me?" Hohenheim asked gently.

Edward obediently turned his small face upwards after dragging his nose across his forearm. Hohenheim checked his temperature, his eyes, and the gray tinged tongue that was stuck out at him when he asked. "I'm afraid," he pronounced when he was done, "that the patient will live. In fact, the patient isn't even sick enough to skip taking a bath tonight."

The boy, who had pulled out of his pout to watch the proceedings with interest, looked crushed. Hohenheim continued quietly. "It didn't taste very good, did it?" Edward shook his head, hard, and Hohenheim nodded. "Grittier than crayons. And not nearly as interesting as Mama's lipstick. And you _know_ what Mama has to say about it. _And_ about this room."

Edward hung his head, face buried against the plush surface of the dog. "Sowry," he mumbled.

"I think it's Mama you need to apologize to," Hohenheim told him. Sighing, he looked around the torn apart room. "Why don't we get you and this room cleaned up a little, before Mama gets mad?"

He reached for the nearest knocked over toy but a small hand grabbed his sleeve, tugging. "Papa?" Edward sniffled. "Ti's hurt."

Hohenheim had found, since Edward's birth, that the word 'hurt', in any context, provoked a singularly panicked response. It took him a moment, heart automatically skipping a beat, to relate it back to the subject - which was the stuffed dog that Edward shoved into his hands. Named and patterned after their neighbors, the Rockbell's, dog Tia, the stuffed toy went everywhere with Edward since he had gotten it for his birthday.

The toy was, as Edward claimed, 'hurt'. A seam had come loose, the front leg dangling by threads, white cotton stuffing bursting from the hole. "Now how did that happen?" Hohenheim asked, though he could well guess. Edward mumbled something unintelligible, tugging at the sock on his shoeless foot. "Do you want me to fix it?" His son nodded vigorously, serious face abruptly changed for a smile. "You don't want Mama to do surgery?"

That got an equally vigorous head shaking. "That hurts!" Edward protested.

Supressing a smile, Hohenheim cleared a space of debris on the floor. "Alright," he said, dropping his voice conspiratorially, "but don't tell Mama." Edward, delighted, pressed himself close to his father's side to watch, wide eyed, as Hohenheim brought his hands together.

It was the simplest of arrays that inscribed itself across the carpet, earth triangle and creation square bound within the circle. Hohenheim started to put the stuffed dog within the array but Edward climbed into his lap, tugging at his hand. "Tell me," he pleaded.

Pleased, Hohenheim settled his son across his knees and began to explain the mathematics and symbology behind the array and the equation that would make it work. He didn't attemt to bring it down to a child's level, instead explaining it as he would to a begining student of alchemy. Edward, he knew, wasn't understanding more than one word in ten, but the boy sat still and watched, fascinated, as his father pointed out each angle caused by line intersection, the symbols, and the elements that could be drawn from it. Hohenheim made it a habit to never talk down to his son, explaining anything asked of him in clear detail. Edward, still half a year from his second birthday, could already count to five on the fingers of one hand. It was more than any of his peers could do - certainly more than the Rockbell's little girl, Winry, who was older than Edward by several months - and Hohenheim wasn't sure if his pride in his son was that of father or teacher or both.

After the array was thoroughly explained - and his student tested, Edward tugging him back to a vertices that he had purposefully skipped over - poor battered Tia was finally placed in the circle. Edward leaned so far forward that he was in danger of tumbling off of Hohenheim's lap, with determined repetitions of "I do!" until his father let him place his own tiny hands over the back of Hohenheim's own as the man touched the array and brought it to life.

The alchemical reaction flared, translucent gold and pale blue, tracing through the lines as Hohenheim released the charge through the steps of the equation. Edward squealed, laughing, as the light engulfed his favorite toy - seconds later it died once more, flickering out, and the stuffed dog lay sedately in the circle, as good as new.

The sound of someone clearing their throat came from the doorway. Father and son alike started guiltily, looking up to find Trisha watching them, soup ladel still in hand.

"I send you up here to get cleaned up and this is what I find?" Trisha asked, exasperated. Hohenheim started to reply but she shook her head. "Supper," she announced, "will be in an hour. And no one with charcoal on them, or ink, or a dirty room, will be getting dessert!"

So saying, she turned on her heel and left. Hohenheim waited until he heard her steps on the stairs before leaning down to hug Edward. "I think we're both in trouble," he whispered, sotto voice.

Edward nodded, sucking on one finger solemnly. "Mama mad."

"We'd better start cleaning," Hohenheim agreed. "And maybe we shouldn't tell Mama that she still has charcoal on her nose."


End file.
